On The Beach and Experian

“Every major market across Europe and Asia was flashing green on Wednesday, meaning that stocks were moving up. Utilities, telecoms, banks and miners helped to drive up the FTSE 100 by 0.4% to 7.042. “In the UK, all eyes will be on the Bank of England’s annual stress tests of lenders’ balance sheets with the results published at 4.30pm. On a global basis, investors appear to be gaining confidence ahead of the G20 summit where US-China trade negotiations will be closely watched,” says Russ Mould, Investment Director at AJ Bell.

On The Beach

“On The Beach has demonstrated the benefits of being agile and able to adapt to changing market conditions. In stark contrast to Thomas Cook’s profit warning on 27 November, On The Beach has managed to grow revenue, profit and its dividend by a substantial amount, clearly showing that you can still make decent money from selling holidays.

“The business wasn’t immune to the hot summer weather putting people off booking overseas breaks, yet it managed to reduce the impact of this situation by slashing marketing spend.

“On The Beach’s ambition is to be Europe’s leading online retailer of beach holidays. It has identified its niche, continues to invest in people and technology and fine tune its proposition to a) capture the public’s attention and b) make it easy for them to browse, research and ultimately purchase.

“These are the basics of retailing in the modern age and companies which don’t tick all these boxes will find life very hard.”

Experian

“The Competition and Market Authority’s initial conclusion that Experian’s £275m takeover of fellow credit check outfit ClearScore would be detrimental to competition puts the deal under some threat.

“Experian’s rebuttal of this conclusion is no surprise, but it must now wait until March next year for the final report from the CMA. The main concern of the regulator appears to be the market impact on the development of new digital products to help people understand their personal finances.

“Experian may now be regretting its decision not to offer proposals to address any of these concerns; its failure to do so was the catalyst for the CMA to launch this more in-depth probe in July.

“Fortunately, the company is not reliant on M&A for growth as recent half year results showed like-for-like sales up 8%.

“As such, if the deal were to fall apart it would probably represent a disappointment rather than a disaster for the company.”

These articles are for information purposes only and are not a personal recommendation or advice.